


Too hot

by ForNought



Series: Too Hot, Too Cold [1]
Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 00:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4587021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForNought/pseuds/ForNought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a hot, hot summer, and Sousuke hasn't been up to much. Except for maybe the tiniest amount of kissing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too hot

**Author's Note:**

> If I'm not as lazy as I know I am this should become a three-parter.

The cicada chirping had swelled into a single pained squall and Sousuke kicked a rock into the trees and huffed when he missed. Typical that he would miss, frighten them into a frenzied scuttling. He wouldn't have the energy to make such a racket but the shady trees probably provided a continent of cool for the insects. Sousuke was relegated to the dusty heat of the pavement outside the convenience store.

He had to squat to stay in the shrinking column of shade and even then he had to squint the blinding white heat from his eyes. His fingers were too slick to easily tear open his ice lolly. He had thought clammy palms were exclusive to his little cousin when she slept too soundly and her tight fist loosened with the catarrh in her sinuses and she left a burning print of dampness at the hem of his t-shirt. She would probably fare better at opening an ice lolly herself though. His frown deepened as he sighed from the side of his mouth, brought the packet up to his eyes and very carefully began to tear from the uniform peaks and troughs along the top.

It was already beginning to melt. He drew the stick out of the wrapper and heard the quiet glug of melted ice inside. His t-shirt was uncomfortably damp and his hairline was drenched with the flushed heat that only served to make him irritable and funnily enough it didn't make him appreciate the ice lolly breaking off in his mouth, the ice burning the insides of his cheeks.

It dropped onto the pavement and the blue turned transparent as it sizzled and melted on the paving slab. If he stayed much longer he would probably have to put up with ants as well as the cicadas and he didn't have anywhere near the amount of patience necessary for that.

He stood, the bumpy, pock-marked wall skittering and scudding against his back on the slide up.

He had nowhere to go. He could go home but he would only do what he had been doing before he left. He had long grown tired of lying by the window and praying for a breezy respite. He much preferred the cooler months of the year, the seasons growing with chill as Autumn deepened into Winter and even the early part of spring. He could wrap up in as many layers as he wanted, or sit and read manga and magazines while enveloped in the heavy heat of the kotatsu.

Just thinking about that made the heat rise until Sousuke’s skin prickled with the itchy heat of the longest days of the year. There was hardly any shade and not a single wisp of breeze to soothe Sousuke’s skin, or his humming irritability. He let his lethargy carry him down the street in swayed steps. He just about spotted a bin at the corner of the street and tossed the sticky wrapper in. Well, he attempted to but he missed and he could not help but groan at the futility of putting in any extra effort on a day like today. He took another loping step before he was stopped by a voice.

“You have terrible aim.”

Sousuke just about managed to summon the effort to turn to the direction of the voice. Kisumi was standing with his hands on his hips, a carrier bag slung over his wrist. In his shorts and his big sun hat he didn’t look anywhere as near as sweaty as Sousuke felt. He probably would have been able to throw his rubbish into the bin on his first attempt too. Some people had all the luck.  

Sousuke grunted. He was very aware that it would have made more sense to at least attempt to form a sentence. It was too hot.

Kisumi laughed. The spring in his step was too buoyant – he practically skipped over and it was fine that he was immune to the sun or whatever but it didn’t mean he had to rub Sousuke’s face in it.

“It has been a while,” Kisumi said despite the fact that they had seen one another all too recently. The carrier bag still swung slightly from its fulcrum at his wrist. Sousuke didn’t care what was in the bag – it didn’t even matter and he absolutely was not tempted to start a conversation with a question about it. “What have you been doing lately?”

Sousuke swallowed. “Not much.”

It was the truth. Unless Kisumi would have preferred to hear about the heaviness in Sousuke’s bones after hours of absorbing the heat despite his best efforts not to move except when necessary. He was an active person but with his head stagnantly thick and nausea the only thing to stir him he thought it made sense to stay away from pools for a while. So Sousuke had spent his days lazing around and only eating food that was put directly within reach of his hands. And coming to the convenience store when desperation was more dizzying than the heat itself.

Kisumi nodded and said, “Ah,” as though any of this really mattered to him.

His fingers twitched and Sousuke swallowed a bitter lump in his throat. Clammy contact only made for unnecessary thoughts that added more weight to the already cloying heat. He exhaled and wondered whether he should have returned to the shop to learn how to breathe again in the conditioned cool. The line of Kisumi’s lips stretched slowly and Sousuke felt the rawness of the skin under the sun – he needed to get away. 

“Sousuke?”

“Hmm? What?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kisumi said. He didn’t look put out at all and Sousuke had to work out for himself that Kisumi had been talking to him. “Are you busy?”

Sousuke shrugged. He wasn’t particularly busy but he wasn’t really in the mood for this either. Kisumi’s face was carefully steady as he nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got a few errands to run too. I suppose I will see you later.”

“Yeah,” Sousuke mumbled. He watched Kisumi stroll away. It wasn’t long until he was squinting at the line of Kisumi’s shadow on the road.

It was hot. It was time to go home.

 

 

 

“Sousuke, can you get that?”

Sousuke rolled his eyes. He was a foot away from the front door when his mother found the need to call out to him. She had given him approximately three seconds to answer the door before deciding the task was taking too long. He scuffed his foot against the floor in the most daring protest he wanted to risk before he opened the door.

“Good afternoon, Sousuke-kun,” Gou said happily. People who did well in the Summer really had to stop approaching Sousuke. She patted down her dress. The sunflowers were cute so that was one nice thing about the summer.

“How are you, Gou?”

“I’m fine. A bit bored. I’m trying not to think of it that way though because as soon as Summer is over, third year is going to kill me for real,” Gou said, again straightening out the soft pleats of her dress and hefting her handbag over the crook of her arm. She slipped off her sunglasses and hooked them onto her dress and glanced up at Sousuke. “How have you been?”

“Fine.”

“Just fine? Not stronger, or in less pain?”

“Yup. Just fine,” Sousuke said firmly. There was no room for argument there, or at least he might have made that point more obvious if he was not dissolving in his own sweat. As it was, Gou raised her eyebrows in disbelief but maybe she was suffering from the heat too and she didn’t press the issue.

“May I come in? I come bearing gifts.”

“The gifts can definitely come in but I’ll have to think hard about letting you in.”

She swatted his arm and barged past, slipping off her strappy sandals and retrieving a pair of slippers for herself.

“Are you really going to shove your stinky, sweaty feet in those?” Sousuke asked as she did just that. She stuck her tongue out at him before calling into the house. Sousuke’s mum quickly came down the stairs to greet Gou with a hug and an insistence that she joined them for some tea and watermelon.

Sousuke threw himself onto the floor next to the living room window, earning a sharp cluck from his mum, but he was mostly ignored in favour of a discussion about some idol. There was a very minor draught that stirred the stagnant air but when it stopped, Sousuke felt the heat cloister even more tightly to his pores.

“… Such a nice young man, doesn’t he, Sousuke?”

“Hmm? Yeah, absolutely,” Sousuke said with rationed breath. He dragged himself over to the tray of sliced watermelon that was conveniently placed well out of his reach. Gou scoffed before segueing into another bout of praise for whatever drama the idol was in. Sousuke could totally have been interested if he had all of his brain function. Unfortunately he was busy trying not to drip his melting brains on the carpet so he wasn’t as thankful as he could have been for the attempt at inclusion.

“Didn’t you mention something about gifts,” Sousuke asked loudly before Gou could change the subject.

“Don’t be rude,” Sousuke’s mum chided.

“Oh, you’re right. I have peaches from mum and grandma,” Gou said as she heaved her bag onto her lap and she started to wriggle free a carrier bag that was almost bursting with the way the peaches had been squeezed inside. Sousuke heard the clank of keys and hard plastic and suspected that a fair amount of these peaches would be bruised.

They weren’t quite as bruised as Sousuke had thought. The sweetness was too tart to be refreshing and the soft flesh left the slick saccharine on his lips and a trail of it down his forearms. His mum tutted at him for making a mess but it could hardly be helped. Sousuke used as few words as he could to point out the drips that soaked into Gou’s dress but all Sousuke’s mum did was offer to fetch a cloth to help mop at the stains. Sousuke was left to languish on the floor.

 

He might have fallen asleep. Sousuke only reached the conclusion because he was definitely waking up as a result of a newspaper being thwacked across his calf. He raised his chest from the floor and groaned at how sloshy his head felt as he looked around the living room.

“You need to clean your ears out,” Sousuke’s dad said, loudly, jocularly and mostly for the benefit of Gou who was failing to stifle her giggles. “Your mother’s been calling you for ten minutes now.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Sousuke said. His voice rasped out of his throat and Sousuke wondered when he had time to gargle gravel.

“How would you know? You’ve been sleeping.”

Sousuke sat up and wiped at the corners of his eyes before glancing at Gou. She dropped her hands and easily supplied, “She has been calling you for a while.”

Very tiny patches of Gou’s dress were discoloured. Sousuke supposed his mum’s intervention hadn’t done much to remedy her clumsy eating habits. He dreaded to know what state he was in considering the stone from his peach was still on the floor beside where he had fallen asleep. It took him a moment but he stood. He pulled a face at his dad and dragged himself to the kitchen.

He sniffed. The smell of sweet potatoes only hit him when he turned the corner to the kitchen. He wasn’t hungry but he could definitely eat if the invitation was there. But it apparently wasn’t and his hand was swiftly swatted away before Sousuke could grab a sweet potato.

“Those aren’t for you, greedy.”

“Greedy?”

“They’re for Gou to take home.”

“Why? Sweet potatoes hardly inspire thoughts of Summer. We should eat these and you can give her a watermelon or something.”

Sousuke wasn’t entirely surprised that his suggestion went ignored.

 

Sousuke was glad it was the evening. Waiting for the sweet potatoes to roast had allowed the dusk to settle with a dry breeze whirling around Sousuke’s shins as he walked beside Gou. Every few steps he would stop and she would poke at the potatoes at the top of the bag in his arms just to make sure none fell victim to the ground. They already had a close shave when the carrier bag handle’s snapped and the pair of them had to salvage what they could.

“Stop,” Gou said, nudging a few foil-wrapped potatoes before dislodging one and unwrapping it.

“Oi.”

“They’re for me anyway. I just happened to be hungry.”

“Look, I’m doing you a favour by carrying these home for you,” Sousuke argued redundantly.

“No, you’re carrying those for me because your mum told you to. You’re only doing a favour for yourself so you don’t get in trouble with mommy.”

“I could just drop these all on the ground right now.”

“Do it. I dare you.”

Gou’s teeth sunk into the sweet potato and after a few chews she started up her strolling pace again. Sousuke tutted before following along. She was right, there was no way he would have dropped all of them, not when doing ass such would incur his mother’s wrath. He scuffed his feet on the pavement a few times as his minor protest.  

When Sousuke looked up from his armful of sweet potatoes he noticed the mirage ahead, drenched in the pink-tainted swirls of the setting sun.

 

“Kou-chan! It’s nice to see you!”

“And you, Kisumi. It has been a while.”

“It certainly has,” Kisumi confirmed. He spared a small glance for Sousuke, a twitch of his lips before smiling warmly down at Gou. “What brings the two of you out here?”

“There’s public right of way on the street, Kisumi, we don’t need to explain anything to you,” Sousuke said shortly. The bag of sweet potatoes was becoming more burdensome by the second. His shoulder was beginning to twinge and even with dusk’s breeze the air was still dry enough to sap the will from Sousuke’s bones.

Kisumi smiled. The usual cheerful curve of his mouth had taken on a wolfish tilt. Sousuke squeezed at the bag of sweet potatoes and wondered how many of them he had squashed.

“Have I interrupted something? Perhaps a young couple on a date?”

“How is any of this like a date to you?” Sousuke snapped. He remembered himself a second later and avoided Gou’s quiet amusement. Until it became a lot less quiet and a lot harder to avoid.

“Ha, ha ha!” Gou guffawed, only stopping when she almost dropped her sweet potato. “Ooh, that was lucky. Unfortunately Sousuke wasn’t the one to win my heart. You really should try not to show your drooling and snoring to people, otherwise you will stay single forever.”

“Oi,” Sousuke grunted, nudging Gou’s thigh with his knee and wondering whether the flames in his face were preventing his brain from coming up with a retort.

“Hmm? I wonder what this drooling face looks like.”

Gou wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue. “Why do you have to make things sound so lewd?”

Kisumi’s eyes widened and he rubbed at the back of his neck where he perhaps felt a tickle from the dusky breeze disturbing his hair. He looked at Sousuke briefly but he found no encouragement there. He dropped his gaze and quietly apologised only for Gou to jab him in the ribs.

“Ah! You can stop now. I said I was sorry!”

Gou continued to jab Kisumi with alternating hands and he struggled to defend himself as he wriggled and squirmed away from her touch. It was alright for some, to be able to act so spritely even when the mugginess was cooled by a breeze in the evening.

“Sousuke!”

“My hands are full,” Sousuke shrugged sombrely.

Kisumi dropped to the ground and ineffectively shielded himself from the attack whilst wailing pathetically. Sousuke was sort of getting a headache. He adjusted his grip on the bag of sweet potatoes and winced at the sticky sweatiness that was sticking his forearms to the plastic carrier bag. His arms really were full. He was not lying but Kisumi still whined accusingly at him.

Kisumi whined long after Gou had stopped jabbing him with her fingers and had crouched down beside him to offer her half-eaten sweet potato. Sousuke had no idea what the gesture was supposed to achieve but it probably wasn’t working.

“I don’t want this anymore,” She groaned, peering up at Sousuke as though he would be compelled to do something about her loss of appetite despite only recently saying his hands were full. He did nothing. He’d been struggling with his own appetite for weeks aside from the moments when he was invited to eat something. He wasn’t about to finish Gou’s half-eaten sweet-potato.

“There’s a bin somewhere,” Sousuke speculated. He couldn’t see one but it wasn’t really his problem.

“Are you sure you don’t want to carry this?” Gou asked from her crouch as she attempted to wave the sweet-potato enticingly. Sousuke held strong and Gou sighed dramatically before standing up and reaching a hand out to pull Kisumi up with her. “You’re coming with us.”

“Why?” The question was for Gou but he still frowned at Sousuke as though he would know what that meant. Sousuke offered a tiny shrug and Gou huffed.

“It’s almost as if you want Sousuke to become a Missing Person. Come on, Sousuke is going to need help getting home,” Gou explained.

“You’re right, remember that time when-“

“No, nobody remembers that,” Sousuke grumbled before forging ahead. He didn’t need Kisumi and Gou making things up for the purposes of being annoying. Not when he was the one who was carrying all of these sweet potatoes for Gou.

“You’re going to wrong way!” Gou called out.

Sousuke stopped, his shoes scuffing on the pavement a bit. He didn’t turn back to face them just yet. He couldn’t blame the burning that was rising up his neck on the sun now. He gave himself a second to recall where Gou actually lived in relation to where he was standing now.

“That’s mean,” Kisumi laughed as he caught up with Sousuke and nudged him along. “Come on, it is this way.”

Gou followed along, dragging her feet and took to poking Sousuke’s back with her half-eaten sweet-potato and asking if he was sure that he didn’t want to carry it. He was definitely sure but she knew that already so he only bothered to respond to her words that were not about food or the fact she has probably dabbing spit, lip balm, and crumbs on the back of his T-shirt. 

The temperature had cooled considerably since the height of the day and he was glad of that by the time they reached Gou’s house and she was sighing long sufferingly as she accepted the carrier bag that was nowhere near as heavy as she was pretending it was.  

“Stay with Sousuke and make sure he doesn’t wander off,” Gou instructed after a groan to indicate how heavy the bag was as she cradled it in her very skinny arms. Sousuke considered telling her to bulk up or something but he preferred to avoid some retort about his shoulder.

He decided on, “Where do you think I’m going to go?”

“Thank you for leaving him in my care. I promise not to disappoint you.”

“He truly is blessed to have a friend like you.”

“You two are literally the least funny people I know. I thought those were heavy anyway.”

“Ah, you’re right!” Gou exclaimed. She kicked the door shut and before it slammed called, “Thanks for the help!”

 

The journey back home featured a detour, not that Sousuke could count himself surprised. Kisumi had always been a fan of scenic hideaways and each one Kisumi led him to looked new. This one was a bit more open that Sousuke expected but he couldn’t see even a glimmer of ocean from the weathered stone bench that overlooked tiny toy houses in sepia.

The nape of Kisumi’s neck looked very soft and strokeable. It was pale as the downy roots of his hair emerged but further down his neck, to the first visible knob of his spine, the skin had turned sunset gold. Sousuke could already imagine the burn that would lick at his fingertips if he dared touch the teasing crescent of skin beneath his collar.

Maybe he had somehow underestimated just how close the heat in the air was, just how well it conducted the scorch of skin because the flame lit a trail through the veins in his forearms until his chest burned with Kisumi’s gasp. He might also have underestimated how fragile his self-control was.

“That tickles,” Kisumi whispered as his hand came up to twine his fingers with Sousuke’s.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Kisumi sealed their mouths together again, much less briefly than in the past and sparkling spasms bloomed in Sousuke’s chest. A groan crackled out of his mouth and Kisumi pulled away to laugh, harsh gusts of damp breath, a tiny spray of spit that he didn’t apologise for, and a smear of spit as he pressed his laugh to Sousuke’s cheek.

“That was sweet.”  

“You’re not cute at all,” Sousuke muttered.

“It’s a good job you’re cute enough for the two of us then,” Kisumi said. Sousuke had to fight back his shudder at that, Kisumi’s voice low and close, warm against his ear. He was still a bit sweaty and he doubted Kisumi would accept an excuse about a sudden arctic blast prompting the shiver. Sousuke maybe didn’t do as well a job as he had hoped because Kisumi exhaled heavily, not quite a sigh, but too flat to be a laugh. 

An attempt to change the subject, to meet Kisumi’s mouth again, was denied when Kisumi pulled back and shook his head. There was something lupine about his gaze and Sousuke swallowed hard against his sudden desperation and tried not to let on how his stomach twisted at the scrutiny.

“You-“ Kisumi stopped, frowned and started again. “We should stop.”

Kisumi was right. He had a home to go to and laze around in until somebody decided that enough was enough. Sousuke sucked on his lower lip for a second, the pattern of Kisumi’s mouth fading a little too fast.

“When can we do this again?” Sousuke asked. He cleared his throat but his words had already come out rough.

“I don’t know. You’re the one who is never around,” Kisumi sighed pointedly. “For all the free time you have you should be able to find some time for this.”

“I have work.”

“Liar. You’re never at the shop. You even go as far to buy things from other convenience stores.”

“I’m having some time off.”

“Okay. Tomorrow then.”

Sousuke was free tomorrow. That and he was also running out of excuses. He didn’t have a burgeoning career as a swimmer. He wasn’t attending a university – neither one a million miles away from home, nor one a mere sixteen kilometres away. He wasn’t even helping out at his family’s shop because he asked nicely and they were generously understanding about something they were ignorant of. He had lots of free time. He nodded and Kisumi almost smiled.

“When?”

“Come to my house tomorrow morning.”

“Y-your house?” Sousuke asked as though the sentence needed any more clarification.

“Obviously. I’m not going through all this trouble to organise something that will take five minutes in the middle of a park,” Kisumi huffed.

And. Well. Obviously he wasn’t. Sousuke needed a moment to come to terms with things before he nodded again.

 


End file.
